Sean's Sports : The Olympics Will FINALLY be Three Dimensional?

The Olympics Will FINALLY be Three Dimensional?

Just saw a post claiming that the 2012 Olympics in London will be, get this, three dimensional. I know, that's pretty crazy, but the athletes will finally be real humans instead of just drawings.

Apparently, however, that's not what they meant. They meant that it'll be broadcast in 3D, to 3D televisions, over 3D cable/satellite service. So you'll be sitting in your living room and Usain Bolt 2012 will be sprinting in place on your floor. And it'll be really sweet!

Sky will be broadcasting, and:

[...] has already confessed to filming events in 3D, and given that the wide distribution of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in HD was all the rage, we suppose the third-dimension is the next logical step forward. Mirroring our own hopes and dreams, Lenz stated that what it really wanted was "glasses free technology."

So I guess the logic is that since a lot of people had HD in 2008, therefore they will all upgrade to 3D by 2012.

I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but HD was in a long battle before it was widespread in 2008. The technology is already over a decade old, and there were a few HD broadcasts of the 2004 Olympics, and more HD broadcasts of the 2006 Olympics, before HD has come close to becoming a de facto standard, finally.

In the early years of HD televisions, they were priced such that real people couldn't buy them. It was simply due to the technology of the time; it was more expensive to make them, and there wasn't huge demand for them. Obviously the prices would be high. Then technology advanced, the picture got better, the screens got thinner, more stations (not the Olympics, real stations that real people care about on a daily basis) started broadcasting in HD, and prices went down. This took a decade, while the economy was doing well.

Now the economy is doing poorly, companies aren't investing in new research, there's no chance someone comes up with "glasses free" 3D technology within the next four years, and if they do, there's no way it somehow miraculously gets pushed out into affordable consumer electronics by the time the 2012 Olympics start.

So keep dreaming, Sky. You're going to need something a bit better to drum up "excitement" for the Olympics. And don't cancel the HD feed.

Posted by Sean Schulte at 2008-12-18 14:58:07